🇬🇧 Tips about living in Uberlandia

Today I'm going to talk about Uberlândia, where I lived between 1998 and 2004 and completed the advertising course. As I said in the previous text, about Curitiba, Uberlândia has an integrated transport system that is smarter than Curitiba.

Of the cities I have visited, it has the safest downtown. I lived in the central region for three years and it was super safe, even at night. There, I never had any reason to be afraid and I was a party girl.

The city has several universities and many important companies. Attracts business tourism and students.

Like any country town in Brazil, don't expect to find excellent hairdressers. People don't use anything super different and so professionals are content to meet the demand of the majority. But it was when I lived there that I made my first red highlights, when everyone only did blonde highlights, and I was never criticized or made a joke of it, despite being dissatisfied with the result after some time. I already talked about this experience here on the blog in a text with tips for coloring your hair. I never stopped being creative about my appearance in the city and I never faced prejudice. It is only difficult, almost impossible, to find local professionals capable of doing an excellent job in this regard. The population itself is good enough to respect eccentric people.

I studied at a private university, attended English and Italian courses in the city and a gym attended by the local elite, in addition to bars and pubs that were meeting places for university students. The local elite welcomed me well.

Currently the city has been hosting some international shows. Recently the band Helloween played there and did not pass through Curitiba. ☹️ (Helloween is one of my favorite bands!).

The city has good restaurants, bars, pubs and snack bars. Nothing too exotic, but with some excellent flavor options. It also has good supermarkets and grocery stores to wake up the chef who lives in you and welcome friends at home.

The library of the Federal University's Santa Monica campus is quite large, a paradise.

I lived for a few months in the Santa Mônica neighbourhood and also in the Martins neighbourhood. They are not bad. But my experience downtown was better because I like living close to everything (shops, bars, everything within walking distance. I only took buses to go to college and Center Shopping, the main mall in the city). If you like more residential neighborhoods, you can really enjoy Santa Monica and other more upscale neighborhoods far from downtown.  I attended Buddhist meetings in the Brazil neighborhood, which is also very quiet. Martins, Santa Monica and Brazil are more middle class neighborhoods. The members of Sokka Gakkai in Uberlândia are the best in the world! At least from the part of the world I know. ☺️

Despite the limitations of a city in the interior, Uberlândia has a wide variety of options for leisure, some cultural options, the climate is very pleasant, the cost of living is reasonable, people are welcoming, and because there are many university students it is a place  perfect for students from all over the world, but also for young professionals who can easily feel welcomed in the city.

At the time I lived there, in addition to taxi and bus, we could use mototáxi, a kind of motorcycle taxi, which, at the time, charged a fixed amount regardless of the distance to be traveled. I used the service once after editing a video with a colleague until late, and it was pretty easy. In the south of Brazil I never saw a mototaxi.

I don't remember using a hospital there and I certainly didn't use a public healthcare services (I only learned to use public healthcare in the south), so I can't talk about this part with you. If anyone has tips on this, comment. I used dental and psychologist services there, both private, and the results were satisfactory.

I have a special affection for Uberlândia and I always say that it is the only city in the interior where I would live again and several times I wanted to return from Curitiba to there. You can travel by bus to São Paulo in nine hours, so that you can spend the night traveling, in a reasonably comfortable bus, and enjoy everything that the largest Brazilian metropolis offers. The city also has an airport and receives many commercial flights daily, but I only learned to travel by plane in 2005, already living in Porto Alegre, and I don't know what the experience of flying to or from Uberlândia is like.

Unless you decide to live in a residential neighborhood full of horizontal gated communities, I think you can live very well in the city without a car. Even when I lived in Santa Mônica I moved easily by bus. Bus crowded only for college (I studied at Centro Universitário do Triângulo), depending on the schedule. Nothing that anticipates a few minutes will not solve. For the federal university there are so many buses at all times that I believe it is very difficult to fill. In addition, there are some areas of flooding when it rains, to use buses as transportation makes life a little more practical and you don't risk getting caught in the floods.

If you have more tips from Uberlândia or questions not answered by this text about the city, use the comment space to express what you have to say. If you like the tips, pay me a coffee (https://ko-fi.com/nycka). Local companies that want to advertise their products and services can send me a message for more information. Global ones too! This blog is visited by people from all the continents on Earth.

Nycka, the nomad